Recollection
by SilverReplay
Summary: A chilling laugh. Red hair. Green eyes. Blood. Stillness. Green. Pain. Heartache. – Severus Snape Centric –


_**Recollection**_

Disclaimer: I own nothing. And I'm pretty sure I'm not making any monetary profit off of this.

Drabble for actualodinson's 30 Day Dark Fandom OTP challenge

Day 18: 10/18/14

**Prompt: Bad memories (flashbacks, being forced to relive via magic or an in-universe equivalent, etc. )**

_Summary: A chilling laugh. Red hair. Green eyes. Blood. Stillness. Green. Pain. Heartache. – Severus Snape Centric – _

...

I can't look you in the eyes anymore. I just…can't. You look so much like her, so much like that girl I used to know back then, the girl I used to be in love with. I stayed away. I couldn't deal with seeing her likeliness be reflected in your appearance, your mannerisms, and your personality. It was like you were her mirror image.

And what's worse is that you are her son. Your eyes are just like hers, the exact same shade and fire. But you have _his_ appearance, that wretched Potter's.

Your hair, just like his, but it also holds traces of her as well. Under the sunlight, it is no longer black, but a dark brown streaked with auburn highlights, the exact same color as hers. And, no matter what they say, your bird's nest of a hair is not because of him, but because of her. I remember when she was young and got her hair stuck in a stray bush. She twisted and squirmed so much it got tangled irreversibly. She had to cut it. Strands of red would be floating towards the ground as I messily snipped her hair with a pair of safety scissors. When I was done, she would have a messy – in the terms of reality, that messiness on a normal day would rival that Granger girl's bushiness on a frizzy humid bad hair day – hair style. I teased her for months. She would mock me for my naturally oiled hair – all in good jest – but my hair became even oilier afterwards. To this day, I swear my 'greasy' hair is from some accidental magic of hers. Like how her inability to cook is because of me. I still recall that time where she would be on tip toes to reach counter and make sandwiches. They came out awful. As she grew older and her mother tried to teach her, she would become even worse. She could bake perfectly fine – sadly she found a new way to extort my acceptance and assistance – but her horrid cooking skills might have been my fault. Honestly, I'm surprised she can keep up with me in potions. Her son, on the other hand, is dismal. It's pathetic. He has her appearance and the curse I accidentally casted on her, yet he has none of her talents in the one art we both love.

You act just like her you know. It pains me to see that same hidden temper, that same calmness and quiet reflection be mirrored by a Potter spawn. You blow up, that fuse shortening as more and more of your emotions get bottled up. You have her aggressiveness and boldness, you won't stand for any injustice. You also have her impertinence. Despite what others may say, she was not a goody-two shoes like Granger.

Something people may have forgotten was the Lupin III incident. Obsessed with the foreign comic at that time, she had managed to replicate his demeanor and personality, centering the foundations of an artificial soul of some sorts. It was highly advanced charms and transfigurations, along with runes, arithmancy, and potions, but she was able to create a working automaton of some sorts. That bastard clone terrorized the castle for months until Dumbledore himself had enough of the thief and incinerated the android with fiendfyre – dark magic I didn't even knew how he gained permission to use. She was distraught that her creation was destroyed, and she wouldn't speak with me for weeks after that – I was the one who finally had enough hand told the headmaster that Lupin III never had any protection from dark magic because she had never delved into the topic. It took a lot of cajoling and begging until she welcomed me back. And all it took was one foul word leaving my mouth for her to refuse to speak with me for years until her death. Because it reminded her of what her older sister yelled at her in fits of anger, it reminds her of the fact that her older sister disowned her the moment she entered her third year at Hogwarts. And I knew, and when that filthy term left my tongue, I knew that I had lost any chance of being with her, of sticking by her side, because I just threw back in her face all of the advances she has done to stick by my side throughout my childhood, throughout our schooling. I became just another student to her, another judgmental git. And I regret it ever since.

Do you even realize that you are imitating her very walk? Even with the differences in gender, there is so much minute details that you mimic that I can't brush it off.

And that personality…dear Hecate, you are a Gryffindor through and through, just like her. But you could have been a Slytherin, just like her. You have that same hesitance in your actions, that slight conflict in your eyes until you get goaded into the misadventures and then end up unremorsefully acting like a true lion. Just like her.

Same temper

Same attitude

Same everything

Everything I analyze, everything I critique, I always find traces of her in you.

And I hate you for it.

Why couldn't you have died that night on Halloween and not her?

I caught a glimpse of that night in your mind.

A chilling laugh. _The Dark Lord's._

Red hair. _Her red hair_.

Green eyes. _Her green eyes and your mockingly similar ones._

Blood. _Not real, but so real to me. Her hair cascading onto the ground and enveloping her in a pool of pure red, I dream and wake to memories of her standing over my body, dripping her life essence all over me and smiling sadly, whispering, "Why didn't you save me, Sev?"_

Stillness. _I could feel that moment when life froze, when the world froze, when magic felt dead, when everything died to me. I lost my purpose, my resolve. The only thing remaining is to protect you – that wretched spawn of Potter and hers._

Green. _The Killing Curse. I know it isn't painless. Despite what it looks like, it tears the soul from the body through the destruction of the magical core. Our magic is what binds us to our living vessels, making us more resilient than the muggles who die because of the simplest of things. I'm surprised you even survived, but she would have dug into even the deepest recessed of magic to find a way to protect her only son._

Pain. _The moment I learned my efforts were for nothing. She stilled died._

Heartache. _She never even knew that I loved her. That I saw her not as brother-sister like she did, but like a lover. I was in love with her for years._

You are my living nightmare.

The reminder of her, the reminder of what the two of us could have been, the reminder of a lost possibility.

You could have been my son, my son with her. But you're not.

She gave up her life for you.

But now, watching as you fly off around on a flimsy stick of wood with the minimum safety charms and precautions enchanted on it, flying away from a _fire-breathing dragon_ of all things, I can't help but hate you even more with every passing second.

You are wasting her sacrifice.

You are just like her, but you aren't. You act like Potter at times. And those moments I hate the most. Because I can reminisce about her all I want, but seeing traces of Potter in you, reminds me of the fact that he got her and not me.

You don't deserve to live.

But I can't let you die. Because you are all that remains of her. You are all that remains of my beloved Lily.

...

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18/30 Days done~

-SilverReplay.


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